When I started my Katherine Swynford blog in January 2026, it was a New Year project: somewhere to share my research, follow a few questions and keep learning. Little did I know how much that year would change my life.
A life before the books
History has fascinated me for more than forty years, alongside a career in nursing and nurse education. I began in mental health nursing at eighteen and later became a university lecturer and course leader, retiring from Sheffield Hallam University in 2016.
That part of my life still matters to me. Teaching taught me to make complicated subjects understandable, while nursing kept people and their experiences at the centre of my work. My BA in Social Dimensions of Health brought together historical study, biomedical sciences, sociology, social policy and psychology. My MA in Disability Studies included the history of disability and the treatment of disabled people in the medieval world.
Retirement brought me to Lincoln and gave me more time for history. With the cathedral, castle and old streets on my doorstep, there was plenty to encourage me. I could follow a question in a book and then go out to explore the places connected with it.
Katherine opened the door
Katherine Swynford was the starting point. I wanted to understand the woman whose life is so often reduced to her relationship with John of Gaunt: her family, her circumstances and the choices available to her. My blog, Katherine Swynford – A Life Well Lived, gave that curiosity a home.
Following Katherine led me to her daughter Joan Beaufort, then to the Nevilles and Percys. One life kept opening onto another. A will, a letter or a reference to a household could send me in an unexpected direction, and gradually those connections became the foundations of books.
An unexpected new chapter
My first biography, Joan Beaufort, Katherine Swynford’s Daughter: Matriarch of the North, is forthcoming from Pen & Sword. Researching Joan led me to her daughter Eleanor Neville, whose own biography explores a life shaped by family, loss and the upheavals of the Wars of the Roses.
Piers Gaveston has since taken me into the world of Edward II, with its powerful relationships, royal favour and devastating political conflicts. These are different lives, but each has made me want to look more closely at the person behind the familiar name.
My talks have grown too, both online and in person. After years in education, I enjoy sharing what I have found and hearing the questions it prompts. Becoming an Associate Fellow of the Royal Historical Society has been another welcome step in this new chapter.
Why this site exists
As the research, books and talks developed, I needed a home that could bring them together. The Medieval History Bloke grew out of that change. Katherine remains part of it, alongside the other people and places now filling my notebooks.
Here I share discoveries from the records, visits to churches, castles and battlefields, and the stories taking shape behind the books. I want the history to be readable and engaging, with a clear distinction between what the evidence tells us and what remains uncertain.
It is a rather different retirement from the one I might have imagined. I am glad you are here to share it.
